The whole reason for the selfsufficientish website was to offer a place where anyone can ask, HOW DO I...? So who knows why it has taken us so long to have a HOW DO I? section, but here it is. So if you want to know how to do anything selfsufficientish then here is the place to ask.

mattbrown wrote:one way to cope wwith large quantities of grass clippings is mulch between the potato rows as they part rot by the time the potatoes are ready to be harvested and they get dug in at the same time.

grass clipping are good between rows of carrots too - helps form a layer to keep the fly out

Defo loads of cardboard in your compost - it's all good - and the brown stuff won't go as soggy as the white.

an old thread but I have a question regarding composting (or other) those waxed cardboard boxes fruit and veg come in. Has anyone been successful in returning these to the soil? Perhaps a trip through a shredder first? An acquaintance keeps a couple of pet pigs (I have a philosophical dislike (read as "rabid hate") of keeping pleasure animals by the way) and gets boxes of vegetable waste from a local grocer to feed them. However the waxed boxes pile up and they subsequently head into the landfill, along with the polystyrene ones.

I'd have four questions - is it definitely wax and not some sort of plastic or similar, what wax is used, would it affect the ability to compost effectively (as I presume it's there to preserve the cardboard in some way) and would putting it through a shredder eventually gum up the works?

Having made sure it definitely is wax I would have thought it would have to be food grade if it's coming into contact with raw veg so that's probably OK. As for waxing the shredder I guess putting it through with plenty of other stuff rather than just a load of cardboard would seriously retard any potential problems - I suppose it might even do it good The same goes for the compost - make sure it's mixed with plenty of other stuff.

I think I'd be tempted to trial it away from any established compost pile.

Maggie

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. Marge Piercy

Waxed boxes don't compost in my experience. Tried and failed. Maybe I'm just not that advanced at composting. Oh and shiny tape of all sorts fails as well (the brown stuff that seals boxes and sellotape).

I think that parrafin waxes are the most commonly used for fruit boxes here - certainly not plastic coated. From what I can find it seems there is no way to effectively degrade these waxes. Oh well, it was a thought

I bought my organic feed in paper sacks and originally, they were in waxed paper sacks, so all good. A couple of years ago, I started noticing that where I had opened sacks out and put them on the garden and covered with mulch, I was being left with this really wafer thin layer of plastic, so once again I have been thwarted in my efforts to get rid of plastic. Those milk cartons I was using for flower pots, the shiny box broke down and I was left with a tiny sleeve of plastic. I have successfully composted all sorts of card, shiny magazines etc, but have never encountered paraffin waxed boxes, but if I did, they would go into the stove and be burnt with lots of other stuff that I use to get the fire alight or rekindle

Thanks Flo - the site looks very useful (with adjustments for my hot, dry climate) So far I have never seen a composting logo on anything in Oz - if lucky you may find a "recyclable" logo.

In my trawling I found this report covering the relative environmental impacts of a range of carrier bags - interesting reading, if only the exec summary. I am not making any statement oner way or the other, others must draw their own conclusions

Thanks for that link Flo, I now realise where I've been going wrong with my trials of using up my grass mowings.
I've been using shredded paper (out of our shredding machine) instead of screwed up pieces. Because of that it has been airless and killing the aerobic bacteria.
Coincidentally I have a large quantity of corrugated cardboard to dispose of, so maybe I'll have better luck this year using that.

Just take off all the cellotape and brown tape before you use it Tony - that's a right pain to take out of a compost heap (been there, done that, got the tee-shirt and learned rude words sorting it out)

What is a right pain is the plastic you find in seaweed, especially fishing line.
The larger plastic pieces are not so bad to remove before you spread the seaweed on the beds, but the fishing line is orange and impossible to spot amongst the bronze seaweed.
I haven't collected any seaweed for a couple of years, but every time I dig the beds I end up finding yards of the stuff.

Hi, I have 2 compost bins, one failed, one seems to be ok but I'm not too sure.
Bin number one consisted of a spare brown bin (that the council never collected) being converted with holes and some carpet tiles on top, it was working will until the woodlice and wasps quickly made a home of it.
Bin 2 is one of the black plastic ones and seems to be doing ok, I've had it about a year and haven't had an compost out of it, but do still manage to get bits in.
My concern is that its sat in a patio (private landlord and a raised patio due to a steep hill, so my hands are tied there) and I do keep putting worms in, but it seems to be composting slowly.
Is there anything I can do to make both my heaps more efficient?
It would be greatly apricated, thanks